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Proofpoint Threat Response vs Splunk Security Essentials comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 2, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Proofpoint Threat Response
Ranking in Security Incident Response
4th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Splunk Security Essentials
Ranking in Security Incident Response
10th
Average Rating
8.6
Reviews Sentiment
4.8
Number of Reviews
6
Ranking in other categories
Data Visualization (14th), IT Alerting and Incident Management (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Security Incident Response category, the mindshare of Proofpoint Threat Response is 6.1%, down from 16.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Splunk Security Essentials is 2.7%, up from 2.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Security Incident Response Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Proofpoint Threat Response6.1%
Splunk Security Essentials2.7%
Other91.2%
Security Incident Response
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2839371 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Consultant at a tech services company with 11-50 employees
Automated email removal has reduced spam impact and gives the security team more time for analysis
Proofpoint Threat Response offers the best features through creating a workflow that deals with different types of emails, including identifying spam. If any user identifies an email as malicious, it triggers a workflow to the information security team, who will analyze it and determine whether to inform the user that it is not malicious or trigger a flow. A flow can be created for different types, where high spam emails are auto-pulled, low spam emails are quarantined for analysis, and integration with Proofpoint TRAP and Proofpoint TAP allows auto-pull for emails declared malicious. Additionally, I can revert changes if an email initially declared as spam is later found not to be spam, restoring it to the user's mailbox without user intervention. This complete feature encompasses threat response, prediction, activations, deletions, and sometimes restorations. I find myself using the integration with TAP and the integration with the Abuse Mailbox the most because those are utilized daily. Users often confuse whether an email is malicious or not, prompting them to use Proofpoint Abuse Mailbox via the report phishing button. As spammers grow more intelligent, Proofpoint TAP is also useful by flagging those emails. No action is required on our side because it is the collaboration between Proofpoint Threat Response and Targeted Attack Protection, making the SOC team's work easier, with reduced false positives, allowing them time for more productive tasks. Proofpoint Threat Response has positively impacted the organization by improving security posture, providing breathing space for the SOC team with fewer false positives, and offering a tool for users to report any malicious email using the Abuse Mailbox, which the SOC team can analyze. Proofpoint intelligence can then declare emails malicious or not and pull them from the user's mailbox. The solution has impacted us positively, safeguarding against spam while giving the SOC team the capacity to analyze needs without being overwhelmed by false positives. In previous days without Proofpoint Threat Response Auto-Pull, the SOC team spent more than two or three hours analyzing emails, checking hash values, verifying the nature of emails, and conducting eDiscovery for malicious emails. During mass spam attacks, the entire day was consumed in firefighting mode. Now, with Proofpoint Threat Response Auto-Pull, integration with TAP, Abuse Mailbox, CSV integration, and other data sources, the team can perform tasks that once required hours in just a minute.
reviewer2836941 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Manager at a tech services company with 1-10 employees
Centralized monitoring has given our SOC real-time visibility into security and application activity
When I first implemented Splunk Security Essentials in this environment, it took a week for each log source to onboard and to create use cases and implement the data model, CIM, etc., for production readiness. Training is mandatory, and we need at least the Splunk Security Essentials User certification because it is a very critical resource in the organization, as we are handling security logs. In my organization, Splunk Security Essentials is used not only by the SOC but also for monitoring logs across different teams, as it is important for handling both security and application logs, given its capability to manage unstructured logs. Splunk Security Essentials has dramatically impacted my organization, as without it, we were blind to what is happening from both a security and application perspective, and it provides vital visibility into the organization's operations.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"In previous days without Proofpoint Threat Response Auto-Pull, the SOC team spent more than two or three hours analyzing emails, checking hash values, verifying the nature of emails, and conducting eDiscovery for malicious emails, but now with Proofpoint Threat Response Auto-Pull, integration with TAP, Abuse Mailbox, CSV integration, and other data sources, the team can perform tasks that once required hours in just a minute."
"The platform's most valuable include the ability to check emails and block potential spam."
"The best part of Proofpoint Threat Response is the Auto-Pull feature. Being able to pull an email back from a user's mailbox is very useful, yet I have noticed that not a lot of organizations use this kind of feature."
"It has reduced our manual efforts to remove emails from each user's inbox, and in this case we do not have to ask our IT department or users to do so."
"If something's pulled and then it's later declared a false positive, it will automatically restore. They also take automatic feeds from their advanced threat detection modules."
"Proofpoint has reduced the number of major attacks on our systems."
"This is truly a top-notch feature, and I have not seen such good functionality from the same kind of feature in any other tool so far."
"Support is very responsive."
"Splunk Security Essentials has dramatically impacted my organization, as without it, we were blind to what is happening from both a security and application perspective, and it provides vital visibility into the organization's operations."
"I would have to rate Splunk Security Essentials a 10 out of 10 because it's free and there's tons of usable content."
"The network monitoring feature is particularly valuable for gathering information about users, login times, and other statistics."
"Splunk Security Essentials has impacted my organization in that we have been getting the results that we wanted."
"We are focusing on security to ensure incidents are reported efficiently. In addition to that, for reporting purposes, we are utilizing our dashboards or creating new ones. We will be using free visualization tools for this purpose."
"They have a good catalog of plans to use to resist the attacks."
 

Cons

"The product has some quirks that could be improved."
"The platform's technical support services and pricing need improvement."
"The interface within Threat Response could be made simpler."
"Scalability is currently limited, as it only integrates with Proofpoint Email Protection, Proofpoint TAP, and the Abuse Mailbox, although there is potential for further scalability with additional integrations."
"The on-premise version doesn't scale well for large companies."
"If the reporting gets improved then it would be better, but the product is running amazing as it is."
"Has some quirks."
"The reporting feature needs to be more user-friendly."
"The biggest friction points I have with Splunk Security Essentials are the high license costs and user behavior that causes performance issues due to inappropriate wildcard searches."
"They could add more AI content or AI and machine learning."
"If I could change one thing about Splunk Security Essentials, it would be pricing. I believe they are still very costly as compared to the competition."
"The price could be improved."
"It takes a lot of time to install Splunk Security Essentials. It's not very difficult, but it requires time."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It's quite affordable to have it with this much functionality and ease to administrate."
"The way most big companies work with Proofpoint is that they try to tie everything into an enterprise license. I can't comment on the actual costs, however I do know that alternative solutions such as Abnormal Security can be much more expensive than Proofpoint Threat Response."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
15%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Outsourcing Company
9%
University
9%
Construction Company
18%
Comms Service Provider
11%
Financial Services Firm
11%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Proofpoint Threat Response?
For pricing, setup cost, and licensing, it is necessary to purchase Proofpoint professional services if assistance is desired during setup, which is quite easy. A license is purchased, and a techni...
What needs improvement with Proofpoint Threat Response?
To improve Proofpoint Threat Response, I suggest adding support for other email protection services such as Cisco IronPort, IronMail, and Abnormal, which would enhance its capabilities. This would ...
What is your primary use case for Proofpoint Threat Response?
Proofpoint Threat Response was initially implemented on-premises as Proofpoint Threat Response Auto-Pull, integrated with Proofpoint Email Protection service and TAP, Proofpoint Targeted Attack Pro...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Splunk Security Essentials?
Our SecOps manager and CISO were more familiar with Splunk, and the price was right. That was probably the primary driver, and we did evaluation as well with strict criteria and Gartner ratings.
What needs improvement with Splunk Security Essentials?
The biggest friction points I have with Splunk Security Essentials are the high license costs and user behavior that causes performance issues due to inappropriate wildcard searches. Additionally, ...
What is your primary use case for Splunk Security Essentials?
My main use case for Splunk Security Essentials is for Enterprise Security, specifically the ES app. Splunk Security Essentials is my primary tool for threat detection and monitoring because as a S...
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

University of Waterloo, Akorn, Fenwick and West LLP
Information Not Available
Find out what your peers are saying about Proofpoint Threat Response vs. Splunk Security Essentials and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
909,725 professionals have used our research since 2012.